Thursday, February 21, 2019

CiM 488 Peppermint Cream

CiM Peppermint Cream is a tinted neutral. Think of the paint department at the hardware store, and 47 shades of "white." While you ponder whether to paint the spare bedroom in "Polar Blush" vs "Miami Sand" - your significant other has given themselves an eyeroll headache and snuck off to the tool section to fondle the sanders.

Peppermint Cream is a lightly greenish tinted neutral.



It does faithfully match the colour of the unmelted rod. WYSIWYG.






With turquoise (Eff) dots - no reaction, some bleeding.



 Fine-silver - some light fuming.



And the self-coloured spacer. 

 It works up nice - no issues. I think the idea of lightly tinted neutrals and a coordinated, subtle palette is an interesting one. I think it will spawn new designs in beads. More variety of colours also means that it is easier to find your own unique look, which is always a good thing.

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

CiM 317 Baked Alaska

CiM Baked Alaska - a creamy vanilla colour.


 From the left, self-coloured spacer, spacer with fine-silver wire, spacer with dots of Eff turquoise (one of the turquoises) and dots of Baked Alaska on top, and the rightmost bead is the same pattern, with dots of CiM Troi.








 The Troi and the Baked Alaska have done quite a bit of feather and bleeding at the edges. No grey line, however.


Here, the dots are Eff Turquoise.  The Baked Alaska seems to be struggling to cover it completely, but there is a grey reaction line, although it is doing some crazy things the likes of which I have not seen before. Interesting.
 Fine silver wire, which has fumed the Baked Alaska, but not really done the sort of thing you would expect from an ivory.
 This lone spacer turned out darker than the base of the two with dots. Whether it accidentally fumed from being next to the silver wire, I am not sure.
 Here, you can see that these two match the rod quite nicely.


So I'm not sure if Baked Alaska is a vanilla, or a french vanilla. It might be a light yellow, or a light cream. Either way, I think it has lots of potential and I'm keen to do more with it.

Monday, February 11, 2019

CiM 473 Eclectus Parrot

Gawd, this is a gorgeous colour. This whole CiM intense juicy green batch of colours just makes me want to make things in green.

Just for the eye candy - here we have Eclectus Parrot along with the rod.


Now, if you have looked up Eclectus Parrot - to see if there is such a thing as an Eclectus Parrot, you will discover that indeed, you could have also named a shade of red or violet as Eclectus. Because while the male is a beautiful shade of green (this shade), the females are red and blue, and for the longest time, no one realized they were the same species. "Hey, I can't get this cage full of green parrots to breed." "Funny, I have a cage full of red and purple parrots that won't breed either."

O_o



Saturday, February 09, 2019

CiM 628 Wisteria

Just another look at Wisteria and Crocus.

Just because they are so pretty.

Left and Centre are Crocus, the one on the right is Wisteria.  Crocus is unClear, Wisteria is more Watery.


Thursday, February 07, 2019

CiM 318 Lemonade and CiM 319 Egg White

Here is another pair intended to match in colour, with different translucencies.

On the left, Lemonade, and on the right, Egg White.  The Lemonade is clearer, the Egg White, more translucent. The second from the left shows a lot of bubbles, but in all fairness - I got it really freakin' hot and I saw it bubble up like crazy when I made it. I'm currently working on a Nortel Arrow, which can deliver a laser-like level of heat.

 Again, with the rod. You can see the finshed bead stays true to the rod.

However, when you heat the glass - it goes bright yellow - like - highlighter yellow. Canaries and Lemons yellow.

Which kind of made me wish for a bright transparent/translucent intense yellow. Because the current batch of Effetre yellow is wishy-washy and eventually I am going to work through my stash of Vetro transparent yellow - and then what?

These two are super match for each other in colour. I am really liking this trend with the matching colours in different translucencies.


CiM 827 Tahitian Pearl

CiM Tahitian Pearl is a colour that develops a glossy metallic dark silver or gunmetal colour.

It does this easily, without any particular effort on the part of the user. In fact, when I put these in the kiln, they actually looked a streaky chocolate brown, which worried me a little, but they came out gorgeous!





















The first thing I thought was, what is the comparison with this and Effetre's 065 Metallic Black and 275 Dark Silver Plum?

The top mandrel is a single bead, from the left, Tahitian Pearl, Metallic Black, and Dark Silver Plum. You can see the Metallic Black has a slightly gold hue, and indeed, I have always found it to have richer colours than the Dark Silver Plum. 




The Dark Silver Plum has a bit of a reputation for pitting and creating fireworks, but I can't say that I think this test was definitive enough to say that the Tahitian Pearl doesn't do it - it just wasn't a big enough piece. 

Dark Silver Plum does some nice things with ivory - bleeding and webbing - so it will be worth it to try it with the Tahitian Pearl - as soon as I get my hands on some more of it!